Durian Klon Bersih (Clone)?

Woo weee, sore throat is gone.......time to sapu (wallop) durian! The durians below might look a little wrinkled but they are bitter, sweet, dry and creamy. Excuse me ya, time to 'makan' (eat) my durian!

Then sapu everything until 'Bersih' (clean) ! ha ha ha!

How to Make a Good Pickled Mango - Recipe

The mango tree at my MIL house bears lots of fruits recently. This is common small size mango and many people do not eat it because it is very sour. I couldn't resist but to pluck some for making pickled mango.

You can make a good pickled mango using the procedure below!

First wash and cut the mango into bite sizes. I ate some with the homemade rojak sauce that I have in my fridge. Wow wee......very sour but nice.....spicy, sweet with the sauce.......saliva dropping! ha ha ha!

 Pour some salt onto the mango and drinking water to make a brine solution enough to cover them. The salt is for removing the sour taste of the mango. You must use boiled water (cooled down) or else the mango would turn bad. To be save, I put the whole container in the fridge for 2 days.

 After soaking the mango in brine solution for 2 days, pour the water away and add drinking water. Put it back into the fridge for one day to remove the salt. Pour away the water and add drinking water again to wash away the salt. Store in the fridge for another day.
When the mango are no longer salty, pour away the water and add sugar syrup. Leave the container in the fridge for one day before consuming to ensure that all the sugar are absorb by the mango.

The photo below shows the end result of my crunchy pickled mango!

Gosh! Look at the amount of yellow dye they put on dried longan skin!

My hands were a bit wet when I touched some dried longan and I was shocked to see that my hands had turned yellow from the colouring they put on the skins! Then I soaked the dried longan in water. The soluble yellow dye made the water yellow. I changed the water for around 10 times and the water still turned yellow from the dye.
I wonder how much yellow dye they used to colour these dried longans? I hope is is food grade dye and nothing poisonous!
Gosh, these are some of the things they do to make food look attractive! We have to be careful of the food we consume nowadays!

Unripe Mango in Spicy Light Soya Sauce Recipe

This is another dish that I always crave to have with rice.  LOL! Alright, ladies, don't laugh lah, guys also have cravings.....but most of the time the 'wrong' type of 'craving' not the pregnant type of craving. ha ha ha!

Mango goes along very well with rojak sauce but this is a shortcut way to do it. The simple Unripe Mango Salad in Spicy Light Soya sauce never fails to make me eat more rice. Peteformation need to put on weight!

I used to have this type of mango tree in my hometown house garden. It will bear fruits all year round and most of the time we will give them away. Unfortunately, my dad chopped it down when some of the branches starts to rot. Most of our neighbours would plant the mango seeds after they ate them, so whenever I pass by my old house nowadays, I could see the offsprings mango plants of our original mango tree lining the road there.

Ingredients
Mango, 1 big unripe, cut into small strips
Light soya sauce, enough to cover 2/3 of the mango
Sugar, to taste
Chili padi (bird eye chilli), 5 pcs, chopped finely

Put all the ingredients in a bowl and mix until all the sugar dissolves. Chill the mango with spicy light soya sauce in the fridge before consuming.

PS : The light soya sauce required is only 2/3 to cover the mango because the saltiness of the sauce would cause the water in the mango cells to flow out through osmosis process into the sauce. After a short while, you will see that the sauce covering the mango.

Ate my mango spicy light soya sauce, Sambal Sotong Kembang, prawn fritters and stir fried vegetable with rice!

Yay, Durian Season is here again! Luv it with Sambal Belachan!

Bought this XO durian recently. The durian look big because of the large seed but the flesh is creamy and nice.

Durian with lettuce and sambal belachan (fermented shrimp paste chilli)! I like this combination with my rice! he he he!

Plus the rest of the dishes for dinner; Rosemary roast chicken and vegetarian soya sauce potato.

Bingo! Selected Watermelon is ripe, sweet and juicy! LOL!

Further to my post How to Select Nice, Sweet, Ripe, Juicy and Tasty Watermelon, the photo above shows the watermelon that I cut today. It is ripe, juicy, seedless and sweet! I found the selection process that I have listed out worked 80% most of the time.

I bought this watermelon from the local hypermarket at only RM0.99 (USD 0.33) per kilogram. The total weight is around 4.8 kg and I paid RM4.75 (USD1.58) for it.

Going to enjoy my watermelon now.......he he he!

How to Choose (select) Nice, Sweet, Ripe, Juicy and Tasty Watermelon - Four easy steps

Watermelon is one my my kids favourite fruits and choosing the right one to buy is rather tricky. There are not much physical tell tale sign to identify nice, juicy, ripe, sweet and tasty water melon. However you can use this four easy steps to identify a good watermelon to buy!
1) Take a look a the tendril (the stem on top of the melon). Ripe watermelon would have brown and dried out stem. If the stem is still green in colour, then very likely the melon is not ripe.
2) Give the melon a thump (knock). Ripe and juicy watermelon have very dull thud. However, unripe melon have tighter and higher pitch sound when thumped. Although this method is widely used, is is not easy to correctly identify a good melon. It is hard to identify the sound when the melon is thumped.
3) The outer skin of ripe watermelon is not shining and rather dull. It is also not smooth anymore. Run your hand across the skin to test it. Next time when you visit a watermelon farm, see how smooth and shining small unripe watermelons are and you will know how to compare it with ripe ones.
4) The lower part of the watermelon that lays on the ground are normally white or yellow in colour. Since they are not expose to the sun, it will not have much of the green chlorophyll. compound. If this part is yellow in colour, then very likely the melon is ripe.

If you are still not sure or cannot find the right melon to buy, then ask the vendor to cut a small portion out to confirm your findings. This is most foolproof test! ha ha ha!
Happy Watermelon shopping and have a nice weekend!

Buah Salak – A sweet juicy treat and childhood spinning toys made from the seeds

When I was young, a relative who came back from a trip to Indonesia gave me a bunch of Buah Salak (Scientific name, Salacca Zalacca). I was hooked instantly and love the taste very much. After eating the buah salak, I would keep the seed to make into a spinning toy that would emit high pitch sound when we spin it. First I drilled two holes on the seeds. Then I would tie a string around these holes and spin the seeds by pulling the string in a horizontal manner. Actually it is not easy to use a manual hand drill to make holes on the slippery seeds. I have hurt my hands countless time but I guess practice makes perfect. After years of growing up playing with my dad’s house hold improvement tools (not to mention lots of blood loss incident), now I am a household handyman! Ha ha ha! Buah Salak actually belongs to the palm family and it is also known as ‘snake fruit’ because of the snake scales like skin. Buah salak is widely cultivated in Indonesia. I found that the markets (Tamu) in East Malaysia have many stalls selling this nice juicy fruit. I bought these buah salak from a hypermarket. This is the chubby and round type. Some people claim that the longish ones are sweeter. Anyway, I found these chubby ones sweet as well. Mmmmmmm, pardon m ya, I am going to enjoy my Buah Salak now!

Improvised Penang Fruit Rojak Sauce Recipe

I only have pineapple and senkuang (turnips) in my fridge when I made the fruits rojak sauce! LOL! My neighbour gave me this Gula Melaka (palm sugar). She bought it for me from one of her trip to Melaka recently.
The original Penang Fruit Rojak sauce is made from Or Cheo (Black Sauce), Tnea Cheo(Sweet Sauce, Gochujang), Heh Ko (Otak Udang, direct translation Prawn Brain, ha ha ha!, actually it is a black pungent sauce made from prawns and mantis prawns), chilly, toasted belachan (fermented shrimp paste) powder, sugar and peanut. However, it is not easy to find Or Cheo and Tnee Cheo in KL. In fact, many vendors in the market in Penang are not selling these sauces anymore. In view of that, I have to improvise the Penang Rojak Sauce with the ingredients that I have. This is a rather simple rojak sauce but it can satisfy my cravings for Penang Rojak until my next trip back! LOL!

Ingredient
Gula Melaka (Palm Sugar), 2 blocks
Dark Soya Sauce, 1 teaspoon
Har Ko (Otak Udang), 1 tablespoon
Toasted Peanut, 1/3 cup, crushed
Chilli Padi (Bird Eye Chilli), 3 pcs, chopped finely
Pineapple
Cucumber
Unripe Mango
Unripe Papaya
Sengkuang (turnips)

Put a little water in a pot and use slow fire to melt the Gula Melaka. Don’t use too much water. Keep on stirring the mixture until all the sugar is melted. Turn off the heat. Add dark soya sauce, har ko and chilly padi. Let the Fruit Rojak sauce cool down to room temperature. Cut pineapple, sengkuang(turnips), unripe mango, cucumber and unripe papaya into bite sizes. Pour the sauce over the fruits and garnish with crushed peanuts.

Homemade Roselle Jam from Home Grown Roselle – Recipe

I have not been updating my blog because I was rather busy for the last few weeks. Anyway there is still some work to do but I took some time out to write this post. I made this Roselle jam from the fruits I harvested from the roselle plants in my garden. Pectin that are found on plant cell walls is a type of chemical that can help jam to set and turn jelly like. It acts as a gelling agent. Pectin is found in fruits and citrus peel. Citrus peel contains the most amount of pectin. Fruits normally have around 1% to 2% of pectin but citrus fruits peels have around 30%. I used lemon grind and lemon juice to help my homemade roselle jam set. Many jam recipes recommend the usage of equal portion of fruits and sugar. I did not follow this measurement because I reckon the jam would turn out too sweet. I used half portion of sugar against the fruits. It is nice to eat this homemade roselle jam on toast or white bread with a cup of hot Chinese tea! Ingredients Roselle fruits, 4 cups Sugar, 2cups (or less to taste) Citrus rind, around ½ teaspoons or more to taste Lemon juice, 1 tablespoon Water enough to cover the fruit Put fruits, citrus rind and water into a pot. Boil until the fruit soften and the water level is halved. Add in the sugar and keep on stirring so that the mixture would not burn. Turn off the heat when the jam turned gel like and all the water almost dried out. Put aside until the jam cool down in to room temperature. Store the jam in airtight storage jar. I put them in the fridge because the jam contains no preservatives.

Soon Beng Longan (Mata Kucing) Trading Orchard, Gadong Estate, Tanjung Sepat, Selangor

After a hearty lunch at Hock Heng Huat, Tg Sepat, we headed towards Banting direction and made a right turn from the main road into Soon Beng Longan orchard at Gadong Estate, Tg Sepat. The owner began planting longan trees many years back and it is now one of the most successful longan orchards in Malaysia. Actually longan doesn’t really grow very well in our climate and soil but this orchard managed to produce good quality longan. I have been visiting this orchard for many years. The medium size longan is very sweet. I would normally buy the fresh longan (RM5) and sometime dried ones as well. Apart from longan, there are also other produce for sales such as fresh vegetables, dragon fruit, coconut, bananas, sweet potatoes, guava, rose apple, melons and many more. There are loads of buses and cars going into this plantation during weekend and school holidays. This is more of an educational trip for my children. Town children seldom get to see how fruits and vegetables are grown. We sat down there, enjoyed some pandan coconut drinks and local fruits.

Address

Soon Beng Longan Trading, Gadong Estate 42800 Tanjung Sepat 25 minutes from Banting town and 5 minute dirt road drive into the orchard

Telephone number : 03-31481018 H/P: 019-2392369

Map of our round trip

Big and Juicy Ananas Comosus (nenas, pineapple) - Bromelain

My brother in law gave me this huge Pineapple (Scientific name, Ananas Comosus) which measure more than 1 foot in length (look at the 1 foot ruler next to it). Some farmer gave it to him when he visited their farm. Pineapple contains Bromelain which has many medical uses. Bromelain is an effective compound capable of blocking pro inflammatory metabolites that causes inflammation to our body parts. Therefore, this natural compound is effective in treating arthritis, injuries, trauma, indigestion, sinusitis, accelerate surgery wound healing process, autoimmune disorders, gout, haemorrhoids, arteries blood clot, and menstrual pain. Those with heart problem should avoid Bromelain because it can increase heart rate count. Anyway, this huge pineapple is very juicy and sweet too after I added some salt after cutting. The juice was flowing all over the container I used to hold it. Mmmmmmm, nice and fresh pineapple!
How to cut pineapple link : http://peteformation.blogspot.com/2009/09/how-to-cut-and-clean-pineapple-buah.html

A Durian a Day, Takes my Sore Throat Away!

Yesterday, after an appointment with my customer and dropping by the office to settle some issues, I went over to Tesco Mutiara to shop for my household groceries. I caught a whiff of something familiar when I reached the vegetable section. I was grinning from ear to ear when I saw some durians on sale! LOL! They were selling 4 packets of durians for RM10 (USD 3) and I immediately grabbed 4 nice packets before anyone does! Muahaaha ha haha aha! Actually I wasn’t feeling well and have a little bit of sore throat. Durians are very heaty, so I guessed only my wife and daughter would be enjoying all of them! Then, I quickly went home and drank lots of water. I only had one durian last night. Sob sob sob! Luckily my sore throat went away today and..........I had some nice creamy sweet durian with rice for lunch! Mmmmmmmm, simply delicious! Taste good with sambal belachan! Ha ha ha!

Honey Dew Dessert with Sago Pearls Recipe

The afternoon heat is getting rather unbearable, so it is time to cook up some nice cool dessert. I have a half cut of honey dew fruit in my fridge and my kids do not like it because it is not sweet. However, the green honey dew is juicy and fresh but I know that if I leave it in the fridge, no one is going to eat it! I thought that the honey dew might be suitable as one of the ingredients in a sago dessert. Anyway, I sliced the honey dew into thin strips and then add it into my palm sugar sago dessert and the taste turned out quite unique! I love the creamy taste of coconut and the fresh fruity honey dew in this dessert. Here is my recipe for Honey Dew Dessert with Sago Pearls

Ingredients

Honey dew, 2 slices, cut into thin strips (better to use a grater)

Sago Pearls, ½ cup, soak in water until all of them expanded

Pandan leaves (screwpine), 5 pcs

Palm Sugar (Gula Melaka, or you can use normal brown sugar), to taste (dissolved in hot water and sieved) Coconut Milk, from 1 coconut Put around 5 bowls of water in pot and bring to a boil.

Add in the softened sago pearls, pandan leaves and honey dew. Then add in the coconut milk. You must keep on stirring the mixture so that the coconut milk will not form lumps! Add in the palm sugar to taste. Serve chilled! Taste good if eaten with Yau Char Kwai (Yue Tiau) or fried bihun (rice vermicelli).

Copyright Material of Peteformation Foodie Adventure

RM10 Durians – Buah masih baikkah? (Is the fruit good?) – A Lesson in Life

I went to the wet market rather late during the weekend a fortnight ago. Most of the vendors there are already packing up their stuff and were ready to go back home. One durian vendors saw me and offered to sell all the leftover durians for RM10. I was skeptical at first but he managed to convinced me when he said, “80% sek tak” (80% good). Somehow it seems like a good bargain and since he is a regular vendor in the Kepong Baru Wet market, I bought all the durians from him for RM10. I immediately opened up the fruits when I reached home. The flesh of the durians is very nice although the outer skin of the fruit were a bit damaged, which I think must have been sustained when they fall from the tree high above the ground. At last I ended up with three containers full of durians. I separated one half ripe fruit into a container. So, one half ripe small containers of durians out of three containers is not too bad. True to the vendor word, 80 % sek tak! (80% good) So the customers did not pick up these durians because they have damaged and ugly outer skin. But deep inside the damaged and ugly skin lays nice succulent creamy flesh. Sometime in life we tend to pass judgment based on someone appearance. A good looking and smooth talker might not have good intention inside them but they can be very popular among the peers. It is always the case when help is needed, someone quiet and simple would be the one that extend a helping hand eagerly! True?

I ate these durian with my homecooked Tomyam prawns, soya sauce potato and rice. Taste real good! ha ha ha!

An Avocado Dessert

I have earlier published this recipe in my vegetarian food blog, Veganformation. Anyway, I have added another new ingredient which is the peanuts to this nice Avocado Dessert. A ripe Avocado fruit would feel a little bit soft when pressed. It the fruit is too hard then the chances of ripening would be slim and you will end up with a spoiled fruit! I bought two Avocados from the local hypermarket at RM1.99 each. First I cut the fruit and removed the seed. Then I used a small dessert spoon to scrape out the flesh. The flesh itself is tasteless but has a nice texture. I added sweetened condensed (susu pekat manis) to the flesh and sprinkled the top of it with some roasted peanuts that I bought from the Kacang Putih (Peanut vendor) near my house. Then I chilled the dessert in my fridge for one hour and served. Yummy creamy sweet and crunchy dessert for my family!

How to cut and clean a Pineapple (Buah Nenas) – Non wasteful method, step by step

Pineapple (Scientific name, Ananas Comosus) is a common fruit grown extensively in tropical countries. This fruit has high citric acid content and at most of the time a ripe fruit is sweet. The pineapple plant grows well in high hummus content soil or peat soil. Thailand is the top pineapple producing country and you can virtually see many pineapple based food stuff in this country. Pineapple fried rice is one of the most common cuisine in Thai restaurants. I love to add pineapple pieces to my Nyonya acar dish and without it the famous Nyonya Perut Ikan would not taste the same! The best way to cut a pineapple is to cut out the eyes (divits) after removing the skins. This way, it will not be so wasteful instead of removing a think layer of skins with the flesh! I bought this sweet juicy honey pineapple from the local market and here is the step by step instruction to cut it!

1) First remove the top and bottom portion of the pineapple

2) Then remove the skins. Follow the curves of the pineapple when you cut away the skin, so that you will not cut away some of the flesh!

3) Make 45 Deg cut on both sides of the eyes (divits), around 3 eyes at a time. Continue doing this until all the eyes are removed.

4) Cut the pineapple into four and remove the hard middle core. The pineapple is ready to eat. Yum, yum, here I come with some rojak sauce!

Nice Apple Pie for a Light and Easy Sunday Morning Breakfast – Recipe

Apple pie hot out from the oven.............................Yummy, the first piece! Almost gone..............................................................Cooking the fillings for the apple pie! I learn this recipe from picking up bits of pieces of information while watching AFC. The apples that I bought from Tesco have been sitting for quite some time in my fridge and they have turned a little bit dry. One fine Sunday morning, everyone wakes up quite early and I decided to make an apple pie from these apples. As this is the first time I bake an apple pie, I am really not sure how the taste would turn out to be. Thank god, it turned out quite nice and really tasty when hot out from the oven. My family had a very nice breakfast of apple pie and my little toddler son loves it so much, especially the pie pastry! Here is my Apple Pie recipe

Pie Pastry
Flour, 7 cups
Butter, 170gms
Salt to taste
Sugar to taste Iced cold water

Apple Fillings
5 apples cut into big chunks
Brown Sugar to taste
Cinnamon powder, ½ teaspoon
Butter, 2 table spoon

A little water Mix flour with butter, sugar and salt until it turned into granules liked form. Add cold water a little bit the time to the dough. You don’t to end up with a pie pastry that is too soft to work with. Knead the dough until all the ingredients in it are well mixed. Put the dough in the fridge and then continue to work on the fillings. Heat up a little water in saucepan. Add butter, apples, brown sugar and cinnamon. Let the fillings ingredients simmer in the pan until thick liquid caramel form. Then turn off the heat. Take the dough out from the fridge and make the base for the pie. I actually use my hand to shape the dough instead of using a rolling pin because I wanted to have the ‘chunky’ and uneven effect to make the pie looks tastier. Pour the filling into the pie pastry base. Cover it up with the leftover dough. Poke some hole on the top to release the hot steam when it cooks in the oven. Bake in preheated oven at 200 Deg C for 20 minutes or until pastry turned dark golden brown.

Related Post 1) http://peteformation.blogspot.com/2009/07/eggs-tarts-than-dak-recipe-taiwanese.html
2) http://peteformation.blogspot.com/2009/06/tuna-fish-pie-recipe.html
3) http://peteformation.blogspot.com/2009/07/peteformation-chocolate-cake-recipe.html
4) http://peteformation.blogspot.com/2009/07/peteformation-marble-cake-recipe.html
5) http://peteformation.blogspot.com/2008/09/simple-recipe-muara-cawang-indonesian.html

A Trip to PD, Watermelon Farm

Water melon plantation in Port Dickson

Watermelons (Scientific name, Citrullus lanatus ) were cultivated by mankind as early as during the Egyptian Pharaoh period. Some watermelon seeds were actually found in some of the tombs in Egypt. China is today’s largest producer of watermelon. Watermelon flesh comes in a variety of colours like red, yellow, pink or orange. The exterior of the fruits are green but there are also yellow ones. More than 90 percent of the fruit is actually consist of water but it is also rich in vitamin C and beta carotene. The rind of the water melon can be eaten as vegetable or pickled. I took this picture quite some time back and I found it recently when I was doing some housekeeping on my computer hard disk. My brother in law took my family to Port Dickson to check out some of the farms and plantations around there. It was sort of a field trip for my kids and I have always believed that bringing them to see the actual thing is better than reading it in the books. My brother in law knows some of the plantation owners and he took us to see their watermelon patch. The watermelon plantation covers a big area, not far away from the Shell Port Dickson Refinery . The plantation is located on a small hill and the workers were busy harvesting the watermelon crops. They gave us two large seedless watermelons which we gladly accepted and placed them at the back of our crew cab four wheel drive. Then we went on to visit other plantations and also chicken farms. After that we took a drive along the coastal road and enjoy the view of the sea at the same time. We have to make a stop by the bridge near Batu Melintang/Kampung Nelayan that separates Negri Sembilan and Melaka when we noticed that the water melons have been smashed in to a few pieces due to the bumpy ride on the road. We took it to the nearby coffee shop, cleaned it and ate all of them. Boy, the watermelons were very juicy and sweet! LMAO!

A Cooling Coconut Palm Drink on a Hot and Sunny Day

Looks like everything that is edible that come across my path sure ‘habis’ (gone), got eaten by me of course! My sis in law house in Butterworth has this nice mature coconut palm tree (scientific name, Coco Nucifera) that bears quite a lot of fruits. It is around eight feet tall and I think it must be the same species known locally as ‘Nyiur Gading’ (Elephant Ivory Coconut Palm.....direct translation!). Somehow the ground near the roots has lots of ants and in fact it sits on an ant hill! I have to be very careful whenever I want to pluck the coconuts from this tree. Anyway I managed to climb up using an aluminum ladder and chopped down a whole bunch of coconut palm using my survival knife...aka...Rambo style, ha ha ha! Unfortunately, the whole bunch dropped on the ladder and damaged it. I have to jump down; luckily the tree is not that tall! The aluminum ladder was a little out of shape and aluminum being a soft metal; I managed to get it back in the original shape again easily! Well, it was worth the effort and interesting adventure for some nice cooling drink of fresh coconut water. Aiya, sometimes ‘daddy’ needs to get some adrenalin flowing too! Every time, whenever I think about this misadventure, I would laugh at myself! LOL! Interesting Note: Malaysia used to be one of the top coconuts producing country but now we are at the eighth or ninth position.

Yum, yum, nice cooling coconut juice!